


1967

by honda_cvic



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Patterson-Gimin film, Pre-Canon, Silver Bridge collapse, also johnny cash is there, barclay would win chopped, both these boys messed up very badly in the same year, can be read as Barclay/Indrid, mentions of the pine guard, rated for swearing and vague mentions of past violence, this is a sad story and i'm doing a bad job explaining it with these tags, written post-ep 19 so if later revealed facts are contradicted here that's why
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 06:16:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16887192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honda_cvic/pseuds/honda_cvic
Summary: On October 20th, 1967, the Patterson-Gilmlin film, the first time Bigfoot was ever supposedly caught on tape, was shot in Northern California. On December 15th, 1967, the Silver Bridge, which connected Point Pleasant, West Virginia to Gallipolis, Ohio, collapsed during rush-hour and killed forty-six people-- the event was preceded by a year's worth of Mothman sightings, which stopped suddenly after the collapse.Two old friends mourn these passing tragedies as their lives refuse to stop shifting around them. Two sylphs are unable to find their balance and stumble into each other once again.





	1967

_“Yeah, I know that feeling [of belonging]. I had a lot of dark days before I knew that feeling… I— look… I don’t mean to tell your business, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to preach, I know that you can handle yourself, it’s just, I am— I’m speakin’ from experience, Aubrey. It takes one misstep, it takes one moment, and you can find yourself usin’ that power in a way that you will regret for the rest of your life.”_

-Barclay to Aubrey Little, Episode 5

 

Barclay’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel.

He could hardly focus, felt like his vision would fail him at any moment; it was already beginning to blur around the edges. He willed it to focus back on the sunny, bumpy road in front of him, and it was in this moment that he hit a pothole hard enough for the truck’s radio to shut off for a few seconds before tuning back in.

_“—back to KHRD 93-3. It’s 11:18 on October 23rd, and up next is the ’63 hit from Johnny Cash—“_

Barclay’s grip relaxed slightly. He took a breath.

_“But first, we take a rare break from the music for some news coming out of our neighbor, Orleans.”_

And the breath was interrupted by a coughing fit.

 _“If you’re in the area we’re sure you’ve heard already, but California’s own Roger Patterson is all over the news for supposedly capturing_ Bigfoot _on tape! Along with his companion Bob Gimlin, you can see stills from the film reel and photos of the apparent prints in most papers. Zoologist Ivan Sanderson has this to say about the film—“_

As if in a trance, Barclay shut it off. He didn’t remember moving his hand over to the radio, or holding the power button down. He tried to focus back in, back on the road and the way his hands felt on the leather of the wheel, but his stomach was pushing itself against the inside of its cavity, and in a flash he needed to pull his ’61 International over. He rested his forehead against the wheel, trying to get his breathing under control.

He had fucked up; he had fucked up so, so badly. Some feeble voice within him argued weakly that it could have been worse, and this wasn’t like that time before, no one got hurt, it was _okay,_ and yet his heart was hammering because it _could have been_ like before. Because it was too close. No, it transcended “close;” it was on tape. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t hurt anyone this time ( _yes it does, yes it does, shut up shut up shut up—_ ) because he was on tape and he hadn’t run like he should have because in that moment he had felt so angry, so done with it, that his vision had gone red and his ears had rung and he had considered charging _(over and over and over again_ ) and—

A breath. Deep, breath. It wasn’t like before. He wasn’t like that anymore. He wasn’t that anymore.

He sat up slowly, fiddling absently with the bracelet tied carefully around his wrist. For the first few days after the incident he had stayed in Orleans and tried to rationalize it, told himself the tape would never gain traction, that he’d probably barely shown up on the film at all, that the men would be dismissed as lunatics. This was naive of him, of course, likely fueled by a desire to stick around a bit longer, not have to flee this time, maybe feel like he actually belonged here. Stupid of him to think this. Stupid. He should have left the second it happened.

He took another breath and pulled back on to the empty dirt road. No where to go but forward, he reminded himself in a mantra-like repeat, again and again until he almost believed it. No where to go but forward.

Barely conscious of the action, he turned the radio back on, Cash’s semi-recent hit filtering in through dull static.

_“—The taste of love is sweet, when hearts like ours meet. I fell for you like a child, oh, but the fire went wild—”_

He wondered, in his haze of driving down pre-memorized roads he hadn’t picture himself being back on so soon, if Indrid would have told him.

 

 

It took Barclay two months to get through the West and Midwest of the country, and as soon as he hit Ohio he heard the news on the radio. He had been trying to keep the radio off as much as possible until he crossed to the Midwest— any news from California seemed to interest them little there, where weather concerns took up most of their airtime. This particular piece of news seemed an important, and local, exception, though, and any anxiety he had managed to outrun on his way east flooded back in an instant.

He knew where to find him, or at least hoped he did, assuming the man was still where Barclay left him last, the fourteen months ago when Barclay had left for the West. He gritted his teeth. The bracelet around his wrist felt too tight, orange pendant not heavy enough around his neck, not enough of a reminder. It was snowing outside.

Forty-six people. Indrid, what had happened?

_“—And it burns burns burns, the ring of fire—”_

 

 

The apartment felt wrong.

It was right where he’d left it: 12H Shepherd Street, Ashton, seventeen miles south of Point Pleasant. It wasn’t how he left it, though, which became immediately apparent the moment he unlocked the door and stepped in, late into the night of December 18th.

A wave of heat bombarded him, rushing out the door into the carpeted, cold hallway of the building. The heat hit his face, warming his cheeks behind his raggedy beard. It was far from comforting, far too hot for that, despite its familiarity. He shut the door quickly behind him, pushing past the strong desire to air out the place. He knew the resident wanted it this way.

And the resident was there; through the warm and putrid dark Barclay could see his silhouette slumped forward on the couch, all sprawling limbs and the unmistakable round of a pair of oversized glasses. Surrounding him on the couch, floor, and coffee table, as Barclay’s vision adjusted to the dim, were hundreds of pieces of paper, crumbled and strewn. Wordlessly, Barclay took a few more steps into the room, tracking snow onto the brown carpet, and flicked on the light switch.

The scene illuminated, of Indrid still hunched over on the couch, unaffected by the light. Of the crumpled papers, now clearly all covered in intricate drawings; the few that remained un-crumpled, mostly strewn across the coffee table with no clear sense of order, showed careful drawings of architectural designs. Of the trash and dirty dishes, the dust, the water dripping idly from a spot on the ceiling, leaking in consistent drops every few seconds and landing on the carpet uncaught.

Barclay knew the other sylph was awake, and had no doubt expected the company tonight— he could feel his eyes boring into him behind the tinted glasses. For a moment Barclay stared back before kicking off his boots and moving wordlessly over to the kitchenette in the room adjacent, which was just as filthy as the living room. He found a trash bag under the sink and swiped everything plaguing the countertop into it in one decisive motion of his thick arm. Dishes crusted with old food and sticky drink clattered against each other as some broke and shattered in the garbage bag. He shed his coat, sweat beading on his forehead and under his arms from the intense heat that also found its way into the kitchen. There still wasn’t a word from the couch, just those eyes watching him, which may as well have been as large and red as the glasses they hid behind (which they were, in fact, just not in this form).

The larger man opened the fridge. Two opened cartons of eggnog. Half an uncooked steak. Mustard. Peanut butter. He peaked in the cabinet. Four cups of instant rice. An english muffin. Vinegar. Flour. He pulled everything out, rooted around for a pan, and set the steak to a low cook after rinsing it. He mixed the mustard and vinegar, added water and a spoon of peanut butter. That might work for a glaze. Meanwhile he set some water to boil. They might not have teabags but it was better than nothing, or more relaxing than nothing, at the very least. There wasn’t much of anything about this place Barclay found relaxing right now, other than the steak cooking and the water boiling and the recently-cleared counter.

“You should do that idea you’re going to have where you, um, cook the rice with the eggnog. It turns into a sort of pudding that even you’ll like,” came a wavy, quiet voice from behind him. Barclay turned slowly, looking through the doorway. Indrid hadn’t moved yet, but Barclay gave him a small smile that tugged on the sides of his lips like they were made of plastic. He didn’t say anything, just took the advice quietly, mixing in the uncooked rice and some eggnog together and bringing it to a low simmer.

They stayed like that, silence hanging between them in the dim light of the apartment: Barclay keeping an eye on the steak and rice, Indrid sitting motionless and slumped, surrounded by a graveyard of visions gone sour. Barclay cleaned up a bit more in the interim of the food cooking, felt more and more tension melt away from his body with every piece of trash thrown away and every surface wiped clean of dust and grime. Whenever he’d feel the other man’s gaze against his back, though, present in a way that seemed distinctly un-Indrid, he would inevitably grow tense again. It wasn’t like it was Indrid’s fault. This whole situation just definitely confirmed Barclay’s terrible suspicion that there was involvement in the collapse. That they had apparently both fucked up horrendously since Barclay had left.

Finally, the steak was cooked and glazed, and seasoned with whatever he could find. The rice, which as predicted had become thick and sweet like a pudding, was done and in bowls, and there were two hot mugs of water. He carried them back into the living room on a make-shift tray, avoiding the papers littering the floor. He hadn’t dared clean those up.

He carefully moved some of the paper on the table to the side and set the tray down, unloaded two sets of plates and bowls and recently washed silverware, followed by chipped novelty mugs of hot water. The smell of the mustard-marinated steak seemed to rouse Indrid a bit, who shifted on the couch and sat up a little, as if unraveling like some ancient, cold-blooded serpent upon feeling the sun. Barclay lowered himself onto the floor across from him, starting slowly on the steak.

“It’s good,” Indrid mumbled, not having even looked at the meal yet.

Barclay sighed despite himself. “That mean you’re gonna eat it?”

“In some.” Futures, he meant, of course. Barclay knew this, just as well as he knew Indrid’s face and all its small sigils. It wasn’t hard for him anymore to recognize a happy lilt, a somber stupor, emotions that Indrid had trouble in both getting across and picking up from most others. Rarely Barclay.

And Indrid was clearly sad now, devastated; it showed in the way he held himself, the tucked in corners of his mouth where he was no doubt chewing on them, a shake at the tips of his fingers. Out of nowhere his hand shot out, grabbing hold of a fork, and he stared at his own appendage in bewilderment as if this hadn’t been his intention at all. As if it had never been.

“Forty-six people,” he said out of nowhere, still holding out the fork in a tight and awkward grip over the table. Barclay couldn’t tell where he was looking behind the reflection of the glasses. “Forty-six people.” Slower, the second time, as if he was testing the sounds out in his mouth.

Barclay nodded slowly, chest aching. He chewed a bite of the steak, which was good if not a bit strong. Too much vinegar in the glaze.

“You’re going to ask about the name.” Indrid said a few silent moments later, only a fraction of a second before Barclay was spitting out, “So, Mo—“

He paused a moment, decided to finish the thought anyways, even if Indrid knew what was going to be said. “Mothman. Sorta catchy?”

Indrid made a foul face, but something lighter than what it had been, when the number had been stewing inside his mouth. “I don’t like it.” He finally moved his fork to take a slow bite of the rice pudding, no doubt attracted by the drink it had been made with.

“Yeah.” Barclay knew the feeling (he considered his feet to be a perfectly average size). He gazed down at his plate, feeling as empty as he had on the road. The room still felt too messy. His eyes shifted to one of the drawings he had swept to the side.

“I did try,” Indrid conferred to him as Barclay continued to stare down at the drawing, a carefully labelled and stunningly detailed diagram of an eye-bar from a bridge, with the number ‘330’ scrawled hastily several times next to it. “At first I did it their way, I filed public complaints, but I— I didn’t know exactly what would go wrong yet. It was too vague for them. So I went down the omen route instead.”

Barclay recounted silently to himself what he’d gathered from the news before asking softly, “The gravediggers?”

“An accident. But after that I figured, why not?”

“The chased cars?”

“I wasn’t chasing, we were just going in the same direction.”

“Indrid—“

“I tried,” he repeated, and there was something new in his voice, a background of wavering despair, one of trying to convince too many people at once of something seemingly inconceivable. A collapsing bridge, an effort made. Two’s a crowd. 

_“_ **I know.** _”_

Indrid had said it at the same time, in a perfect unison, and in that moment he seemed to deflate, crumpling up like his drawings. He slid off the couch silently and onto the floor, sitting in front of the coffee table still opposite of Barclay. He looked too tired, too thin, crystal hung too loosely around his neck. Barclay fingered his own absently.

“Did you know… what would happen?”

Indrid lifted his head a little, paused, searched, seemed to find something. “You mean the tape.”

Barclay nodded, chest tight.

He had to think again. “I don’t know,” he finally responded after taking a thoughtful bite of the eggnog rice pudding. “Every time you leave there’s— well there’s thousands of possibilities of you messing up, no offense, or me messing up, and from there they splinter so many times it’s just—“ He tilted his head, tapped his fingers against the table. “It becomes a lot very quickly. I think I did know. But not before you left. And there was— there was so much to do here.”

“Oh.” Pause. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting. “Guess I shouldn’t’ve left in the first place.”

Indrid considered him carefully, raising his head to finally look at him, or at least Barclay believed he was. “You don’t need to stay.”

“I— I just don’t understand,” Barclay shut his eyes, feeling his temper suddenly rising like bile in his throat, “why you can’t leave. You’ve been here for too long and now they know you. Why do you wanna **stay** _?”_

Indrid had spoken over that last word, his sing-song voice attempting to match the strained chord of Barclay’s. He didn’t add anything of his own, though, just furrowed his brow in the stead of words, looking back down.

“You can’t tell me.”

“No, I can’t.”

Barclay put his face in his hands. “Indrid I donno if I can keep doing this,” he breathed, meal in front of him forgotten. “I thought California was it. I really thought it was gonna be it this time. But I couldn’t even— I didn’t want to keep it on, I don’t know why, I just couldn’t— and now I— I’m on _tape_ and there’s national coverage of it, they were on a fuckin’ radio show in fuckin’ _Vancouver._ And you won’t tell me why West Virginia is so fuckin’ special but this place ain’t for me and now it ain’t for you either and you _still_ won’t leave!”

“What can I say, I just love the atmosphere here.”

Barclay barked a laugh despite himself, body convulsing with it, face still in his hands.

“If I tell you,” Indrid started slowly, tone odd, “you won’t come back when you need to. And you will need to. They’ll need you.” He sighed, barely audible. “I… think I’m done playing the interference game. This hasn’t been fun. But you—” He looked at him then, really looked at him. Barclay stared at his own reflection in the glasses. “You’re going to be so, so important in helping them.”

He wanted to ask who, who’s going to need him, but he knew Indrid wouldn’t tell him. Maybe he was becoming psychic, too. “I’m sorry ‘bout the bridge,” he said finally, softly, feeling the anger drain back out of him. “I was worried.”

Indrid shrugged, bony, bare shoulders rising and falling, shiny with sweat. “They can’t say I didn’t try to warn them. It was unfortunate, though. And I know it’s okay to be upset about it,” he tacked on quickly before Barclay could open his mouth. “And I— I am.”

The two looked at each other, two sad sylphs stuck in a world they voluntarily came to, two sad sylphs that had each messed up so tremendously badly. Barclay found himself wordlessly moving over to the other side of the table, settling down on the floor next to Indrid, who leaned against the larger man stiffly, reaching out to hold his mug of hot water in both hands, sapping its heat. They stayed like that, unmoving, pressed against each other, one radiating warmth that the other took up gratefully, both radiating melancholy that the other felt and yet couldn’t seem to reciprocate. Both opened their mouth to speak. “ **Me too**.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, please leave a quick review! Again, at the time this was written, episode 19 has just been released, so anything revealed later (about Barclay's past in particular) might not be well-reflected here.
> 
> Chat with me on tumblr! I'm honda-cvic.
> 
> EDIT: I decided to add another chapter to this! It will be the same events from Indrid's 3rd p POV, so more info on the bridge collapse among other things. Look forward to it!


End file.
